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The Portuguese coach tried to sign the Brazil international whilst at Chelsea earlier this year and for Spurs over the summer, but had offers snubbed.
Spurs were reportedly close to bringing Willian to White Hart Lane for a fee of €30 million, but failed to come to a final agreement with the Ukrainian club before the transfer window closed.
However, Villas-Boas has now revealed that the club may not need to bring make any new signings, with a host of injured players set to return to action over the coming weeks.
The 35-year-old said: “He is an extremely good player but we have to respect what we are doing and the talent we have in our squad and, to be fair to you, I have not thought about January.
“We have scouts all over the world gathering information but we have not studied January as we have so many players coming back from injury and I think they will be the main players coming in.”
Willian played in Shakhtar’s 2-1 win over Chelsea in the Champions League last night, who also tried to sign the 24-year-old this year.
Shakhtar’s director of strategy, Joseph Palmer, conceded that communication with rival teams in this way is regular practise in the game.
He said: “It can be a little unsettling but I think it goes on a lot in football when another team is after a player, they always find ways to get messages through and that is football and I don’t read too much into that.
“For us to continue to progress we need to hold onto our best players through the January window and I suspect we will but if we perform well in the Champions League we are bound to attract interest.”
